•  
  •  
 

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

individualism wall, Ubuntu community, immaculate conception, Catholic parish

College

Fine Arts and Communications

Department

Music

Abstract

As I near my host family’s neighborhood, the streets become constraining tunnels. Lining the curbs are wall after wall of concrete above my head, topped with razor wires, electric lines, or metal spikes. The only breaks to the walled monotony are tall, jail-like gates. Shutting the automatic gate behind me instills the intentional impression of exclusion from the outside. Privacy and security of walled homes is increasingly sought after, even in townships where resistance to apartheid once forged strong communal unity. Here, such walls are also signs of community rejection. Both anthropologists and politicians have noted a decline in sense of community and interdependence in South Africa. This decline is usually voiced as a decline in the traditional, humanistic, and highly-spiritual South African concept of ubuntu. My hosts admitted that they rarely speak to neighbors beyond an occasional passing greeting, but that their Catholic Church acts more as a community than does their actual geographic neighborhood. East London’s Immaculate Conception Catholic parish promotes this disappearing ubuntu, bringing people together into interactive sharing, even in opposition to arguments that Christianity is inherently individualistic.

Download

Included in

Music Commons

Share

COinS